Do you suffer from low back and neck pain?
Today's large, heavy purses and trendy handbags keep getting bigger and bigger.
How do these bags make your neck and back feel? Pain, soreness? How does a bag cause joint pain, neck pain or back pain?
Are you getting more headaches than you have in the past?
Lets look at your purse.
Most woman with large bags can fill them to the top. Ask her," What is in the bag, are these items she can not do without! Most of these things we can live without for the few hours till we return home.
Lugging around these heavy bags ,typically weighing 10-16 pounds or more - can often be the primary cause of your upper back problems.
The pain is not always present while you are carrying the bag. This makes your pain a mystery with no known cause or correlation to your symptoms. The pain can show up as later even a day alter.
Men you are not out of the woods either !
Gentlemen you to have issues carrying your large wallets in your rear pocket.
The days of the big fat leather wallets, loaded with plastic sheathed photos of family and credit cards need to come to a end.
Lighten your wallet and decrease your sciatica symptoms. If you want pictures of the kids and wife put them in your phone your are more likely to view them more frequently then when in your wallet.
Carrying a wallet in your back pocket can cause low back pain, leg pain and hip pains.
Make changes
Start by changing what is in the wallet-cut out picture and down load them
onto your phone.
Take out unnecessary credit card
Avoid the speciality card and keep them on a key ring
Carry you wallet in your front pocket to avoid the low back pain.This may prevent a pickpocket from picking your wallet.
A great idea is to totally give up a wallet and us a money clip.
The American Chiropractic Association recommends that handbags weigh no more than 10 percent of the owner's body weight, but doctors point out that the rule was made assuming the weight would carried distributed evenly across your back, like when wearing a backpack.When the bag weighs more than 10% it can begin to cause a serious injury compressing on the nerves coming from the neck area.
A common purse load can weigh -- roughly the equivalent weight of two newborns.
If you weigh 150 lbs then your bag should not weigh more than 7.5 lbs. and this should be carried equally on each side 3.25 lbs per shoulder
Wearing a strap over one shoulder should generally weigh less than 10 percent of your body weight to avoid injury. Remember to switch the sides you're carrying it on often, and walk using correct posture.Keeping your head and shoulders aligned and upright.
Remember to switch the side you're carrying your purse on often, and walk with correct posture, keeping your head and shoulders aligned and upright.
Women if you are carrying around a fashionable heavy handbag you could be setting yourself up for a unintended destination of neck and shoulder pains.
What Happens?
Carrying a heavy load on one side of your body every day can lead to compression through the spine, when carrying a bag for more than three minutes, it cause a lengthening of tissues, a phenomenon known as tissue creep.
This can restrict and compress the spinal joints, which then leads to numbness and tingling in the hands, lengthening and imbalance in the muscles in the shoulder and back, headaches, arm pain, shoulder pain. This is what leads to the pain we later feel.
Another problem is when a woman is wearing high heels while carrying a heavy bag. This can cause back pain into the mix by shifting the load further forward and moving the neck compression down into the lumbar spine. Check not just your bag, but also your shoes!
The best way to carry a heavy load is in a back pack be sure to use both straps and carry the load over both shoulders equally.
The two-shouldered bag is not likely to spark a new fashion trend. It will prevent injury that can become chronic... You choose fashion or chronic pain issues!
Avoid the trap of the vanity issues and put your spine in first place above vanity.
The ideal purse- is one with a wide strap that keeps the load close to your body.
The best choice is a back pack, 2ND best is your messengers bag that is worn over the shoulder. Straps that are worn over the shoulder help keep the weight close to the body and disperse the load more equally.
How to Buy a New Purse
• Purchase a purse with short, wide straps- this keeps the load close to your
body
. Straps that run across the body/ chest are ideal for distributing the load.
• Clean out your purse regularly to keep the load light.
• Set your purse down whenever you get the chance.
• If you must do carry a heavy bag, such as a computer bag, switch
shoulders often.
• Consider dividing your heavy load between two bags.
***My best advice is that if you must carry everything for everyone take your last or a old purse. Purchase a small ideal bag with wide straps and put only in it what you need. Be sure the small bag has only the necessary things. In the older larger bag put everything else and store this bag in the trunk of your car. This way you will never feel like you are without all the stuff you will need someday. Remember you can also store stuff in the glove box.
Lets start lightening up your bags and see if you don't see less neck and low back pain.
Please note if your symptoms persists then give our office a call and we can discuss correction for your pain issues.
